Untouchable
by ScriptedScarlet
Summary: Coby is now the aged, former Fleet Admiral. He and Helmeppo find themselves investigating a mysterious cult that has sprung up around a woman who calls herself "Untouchable"...a woman who sounds a little too much like someone from Coby's past. But she couldn't possibly still be alive... Oneshot. Written for the OP Halloween event. Prompt: Undead/Immortal.


**Written for the OP Halloween Tumblr event. Day 2 prompt: Undead/Immortal. I do not own One Piece. Apologies for any spelling/grammar mistakes, I know they are there!**

* * *

"I hear she was a warlord."

"She dropped off the radar when the system was disbanded. Christ, how long ago was that?

"Forty...maybe fifty years?"

"She wasn't a warlord, she was just fucking one!"

"Language!" said Vice Admiral Coby sharply over his shoulder, and the young Marine cowered.

"S-sorry sir!"

At eighty-two years old Vice-Admiral Coby had stepped down from Fleet Admiral, but staunchly refused to retire. His once bright pink hair had long since turned to a faded rose, and his boyish good looks had long since faded into wrinkles and crevices, but he was still wiry, tough and fit. His body was a tool, one that Garp had trained well - god rest his soul.

Coby kept telling himself the arthritis and the dementia would set in any day now, but by god he was still standing, still fighting fit, and as long as he was, he would still be a Marine.

Hell, Tsuru had held Admiralhood until she was 89, he still had a few good years left in him!

"No way, she was the real deal."

"If she was really a warlord, there would have been more government records of her. You're thinking of Boa Hancock."

"No way. That old hag?"

"Did Boa Hancock even have Devil Fruit powers?"

"No, she was cursed."

Out in the East Blue where Coby grew up, devil fruits may have been household myths, but out in the Grand Line and New World they were a common occurrence. However, that did not necessarily mean their powers and abilities were common public knowledge. Indeed, Boa Hancock and her sisters had fooled an entire nation into believing that their devil fruit powers were the result of a curse.

"Well yeah no kidding, she ate a _cursed_ fruit!"

"That is NOT what they are called!" barked Helmeppo at the young recruit. "I don't want to hear nonsense about 'cursed' fruits! For heaven's sakes, we're past those times!"

Decades had passed since the death of Monkey D. Luffy, and many known pirates of the Worst Generation had slunk into the shadows. But individuals with very particular powers had attracted cult-like followings. Followings of youngsters who, like these young Marines - had not grown up with a government where Warlords held power, or known a sea ravaged by "The Worst Generation." Names like Boa Hancock, Trafalgar Law, Whitebeard, Monkey D. Luffy, had been living, breathing people to Helmeppo and Coby, but to this new generation - like these three young Marines behind them - they were nothing but legend and myth.

"'Cursed fruits,' what nonsense," muttered Helmeppo. "These kids I tell ya, can't even call them 'devil fruits' for fear you'll scare 'em or something. Next they'll be making us drinking fruit punch at the bar."

Coby chuckled, but the more recent shifting charlatan-like ideology around devil fruits was troubling. Powers were no longer just for piracy, they were for trickery and ensnaring the gullible.

By now most of the worst generation had died off. And yet nearly fifty years later, Coby heard tell of a mysterious following around a woman referred to as "The Untouchable."

"This is it," he said, looking up at the shrine.

It was nightfall and a pair of torches flanked the path into the clearing.

"This could be a total fluke," said Coby. "This could be nothing, understand? We're just, doing a check."

Indeed, the squad was barely armed. Helmeppo had brought a pistol and his katakuri knives, and Coby carried nothing but a pistol with seastone bullets, a relic from the old days for emergencies only. Indeed, seastone had been so rampantly overused in the past for weapons, handcuffs and lining boats that the mineral was now near impossible to come by. Even the black market couldn't acquire it.

"With all due respect, Vice Admiral," piped up one of the new recruits. "Why is this pirate so important?"

"She was allied with a Warlord, as you were all gossiping about," said Helmeppo, quickly chiming in with a prepared response. "She's ducked out of Marine custody a handful of times now, if it's really her. Which is why we're here to find out."

It stung Coby that after fifty years he was still chasing shadows.

The torches flickered across the lines in his face, turning wrinkles and fine lines into deep crevices and crags.

"Are you sure about this Coby?" Helmeppo muttered, as they trudged up the path. "Truly, I can't believe she'd be alive. She _can't_ be."

* * *

"Sir, do you have an appointment with her Purity?"

"I'm uh, an old acquaintance."

"Forgive me," the shirtless young man fidgeted. He was wearing some kind of gauzy skirt and lipstick. "The Divine Untouchable Goddess is tired. She is resting. If you would like to receive a blessing from her, please return tomorrow."

Coby sighed. "We're here on government business son, please don't make this hard for yourself. We're just here to ask a question or two."

The boy cowered under Coby's intimidating stare.

"Y-yes of course. Her Purity may be able to spare a moment for you."

Coby and she squad were led down a dim hallway through the shrine. Many half clothed attendants eyed them suspiciously.

"Don't stare," muttered Helmeppo to the recruits behind them.

They drew up to a large curtained room. A small flock of peacocks flurried away as they entered. The attendant lifted a drapery aside, and they stood before a pile of silks and pillows.

What looked like a figure lay before them, wrapped in pink and white silk. Her face and head were veiled.

"Who is it?" The voice was faint, hollow. The silks stirred faintly.

"My Goddess," the young boy intoned. "Most Divine, Untouchable Goddess. Some gentlemen from the World Government have come to see you. They say they shall be brief."

"I said I was _done_ with blessings for the day."

A chill went down Coby's spine.

He _knew_ that tone.

"My apologies, my Divinity," murmured the boy. "They said it was official business, I didn't-"

"My name is Vice Admiral Coby, formerly Fleet Admiral of the Marines," said Coby, swallowing the tiny, shameful tremor of apprehension. "I just had a few questions for you."

The veiled woman was silent.

"Ryoshi, leave us."

"But your Perfection -"

"I said _leave_." That chill went down Coby's spine again.

It couldn't be. His mind was playing tricks on him.

The boy made himself scarce, and Coby was left standing before the pile of fabric that was a woman.

"I know that voice," the woman murmured. " _Coby_ , you said?"

"That's right."

With what seemed to be a tremendous effort, the woman pushed herself upwards on the pillows, her breathing heavy and laboured. She clutched at her chest, sparkling diamonds at her fingers. She finally sat up, her neck and arms encrusted with pearls.

"Well, hello there cabin boy," she purred. "It's been awhile."

It _was_ her.

Helmeppo reacted before Coby did. The pistol next to his knives was drawn in an instant.

She keeled over in a spray of pearls, the bullet shattering her many necklaces. Beads spilled across the silks.

One of the squad members gasped, the other two stood with their jaws slack.

There was not a drop of blood across the fabric. Slowly, shaking, she sat up again. There was no bullet wound visible on her.

"That's no way to greet your former captain, Coby," she hissed. "Do tell...how else do you plan to kill me?" she intoned, her voice deadpan. "Perhaps your boyfriend can try stick a couple of those knives in me too, and see if that does any good."

She reached up a manicured hand and withdrew the veil from her face.

Age had not touched the face or the skin of Lady Alvida, but it had touched her in other ways. Her skin was flawlessly smooth, her devil fruit ability had preserved it without the slightest wrinkle or blemish. But it was that preservation that had rendered her so otherworldly and terrifying.

Purple red veins blotched across her face and body, visible beneath her perfect skin. Her eyes were milky and clouded. Her hair was stark white, sleek and shiny and long down her back. The silks fell from her body and Coby could see every swollen vein and bone beneath perfect, pure pale skin. She was like a pure white doll, a near-albino doll whose ribs, internal organs, and bone were appallingly visible beneath a semi-opaque layer of pearl. Stomach, lung and a queasily beating heart, all protected under perfect, translucent, opalescent skin. Beautiful, and grotesque.

One of the Marines behind him fainted, and Coby heard another one run from the room and get violently sick in the corridor.

"Remarkable, isn't it?" Alvida said. "I stopped being able to see my reflection ages ago, but I can imagine. A broken clock inside a flawless timepiece. The shell is functional, beautiful, flawless. It holds all the pieces inside, but they're still broken, rusted and fractured. Like wrapping a dead animal in velvet. I am preserved perfectly, as my outside refuses to die with my insides."

Coby felt nauseated.

"The paramecia is a fascinating class, sailor boy," Alvida murmured, raising a pale arm, unnaturally smooth, and regarding it with near blind eyes. "Not as powerful as the logia, but certainly with some interesting effects."

Coby's mouth was dry. "This is, because of your devil fruit?" he said, his gruff voice smaller than he intended. "Can you...not die?"

"I have been...trying to die," whispered Alvida. Coby could hear the strain in her voice. "It was all fine and grand to still look in my thirties when I was really going on seventy. But then I realized I wasn't changing, that my body was aging but my shell... would not."

She ran a hand through pure white hair, blinking pale eyes at Coby.

"I sought out Trafalgar Law. Some of us need help dying. He asked me if it was what I wanted. He took out my heart and gave it to me. I saved it for years. When I thought it was truly time…. I tried to stab it."

The diamonds on her hands sparkled in the dim light as her hooked, pale fingers clenched at her chest.

"The knife... _slipped_ off my heart."

"Are you, immortal?" whispered Helmeppo.

"Oh, I'm not so cursed," said Alvida, leaning back down. "There are a few of us out there like that…Doflamingo's brat, and Trafalgar himself. But there a few unpleasant ways I could go about it. I could poison myself and watch my insides corrode up with the last of my vision." She ran a hand down her bare midriff where her stomach and intestines were barely visible, greyish and repulsive.

"I could jump in the ocean and drown, that's the easiest way, and wash up somewhere purple and bloated. So...undignified. So ugly. Not like me. I am beautiful, even now."

She turned to look at Coby with milky eyes. "So I exist in this half state - my shell preserved, but body giving out. My powers have provided me with unnatural longevity, my skin holds me together. I wait. I wait every day. My needs are attended to - to those around me I am a divine being. My smooth skin renders me untouchable, as it always has. But Coby, I am so tired. I should have been dead twenty years ago. Thirty years ago."

Alvida fixed him with a pale gaze that Coby recognized all too well. It was a challenge.

"Is this what you expected when you came to seek revenge, Coby?" she laughed. "Going to arrest a withering old woman? Going to try and kill a woman who can't be touched by weapons? Is this how you planned your little childhood fantasy of revenge?"

Coby was not prepared for this. Coby truly realized, that he had not mentally prepared himself for meeting his tormenter elderly and infirmed - much this terrifying half state that she was. He genuinely had not believed she was alive after all this time...so to see her in that unnaturally smooth flesh and ailing body, what was he to do?

Alvida made as if to stand, and swayed dangerously on the pile of pillows. Coby quickly ran to catch her just as she fell.

"Well what's this sailor boy," she sneered. "Chivalry? For the woman it's taken you a lifetime to chase down? Or pity, surely not, you -"

She stopped, her eyes wide and her hand shaking as she clutched his coat.

"Good lord," she whispered. "I can feel it.."

She plunged her hand into Coby's coat with incredible speed and whipped out his pistol, toppling herself from arms.

"Alvida, no!" Coby yelled, lunging for her. "They're not like Helmeppo's, the bullets are seast-"

The bullet struck him in the shoulder, sending him reeling back and falling next to her.

"I know." said Alvida, smiling over the smoking barrel. "I know. I felt it."

"Don't move," she hissed, holding the gun out in front of her as Helmeppo lunged for her. He froze. "I don't need to see you to hit you this close."

She gave an immense, rattling sigh and placed the gun in Coby's hands, the pistol aligned to her head.

"It can go out that I went down fighting an old rival," she said, staring at him with tearful, milky eyes. "Thank you Coby. You weren't so useless after all."

With her hand on Coby's, she pulled the trigger.

* * *

 **Let it be known to my beta reader that I am indeed capable of killing off my favorite characters in fanfiction.**

 **(The 'cursed fruits' are a 4kids jab - I am finding the growing phenomenon of One Piece fans not familiar with the 4kids dub rather surprising!)**

 **This is an old theory of mine that I creeped up a little bit for Halloween. Hope you enjoyed! Happy Halloween and please review!**


End file.
